


only lose a little

by coricomile



Category: Misfits
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:51:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/pseuds/coricomile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The four relationships of Nathan's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only lose a little

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Macdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macdragon/gifts).



When Nathan's eleven, he runs away for the first time. He packs his knapsack up, grabs a soda from the fridge, and walks out the door. 

He's expecting something exciting to happen, if only to reward him for having the balls to leave his mom, but everything is almost painfully the same as it's always been. He goes to the shops and lifts some small trinkets that he immediately throws away, and shuffles around the streets making nasty faces at people that pass him.

Now that he's actually out of the house, he doesn't know what to do. Planning has never been his strong suit. 

He wanders around until his fingers are frozen and his stomach is rumbling. The small part of him that's still angry gets angrier. His mom should have been looking for him. She should have found him by now. The other part, the cold one, is too tired and cranky to care.

He stays out longer than he should, shivering in an alley. The sky gets darker and darker, and Nathan’s childlike stubbornness is outweighed by the sheer terror that creeps into his chest. He feels like a failure as he takes the path back home. He’s only been gone twelve hours, if that. Not enough. 

When he gets home, his mom is still out. There's a note tacked up to the fridge with a few quid. She's going on a date, loves him very much, and here's some cash for a pizza.

Nathan stares at it, his little boy hands smarting as they warm up, and fights the strong urge to cry. She hadn't even noticed he'd been gone.

This is Nathan's relationship with his mother. He never expects better.

\---

Nathan goes down on a girl in a hedge when he's fourteen. She's a little older than him, a little bigger than him, and a lot drunker than him. Her dress is torn at the hem where it caught on a branch. Sequins, silver and gold and black, shimmer over everything.

He doesn't know what he's doing, but he attacks the problem with enthusiasm. Everything is slick and damp and a little smelly. The girl keeps grabbing his ears and pulling his head, which should be hot but actually is just annoying. 

He thinks her name is Sarah, but he’s not really sure. They’d only talked for a moment, and even then she had just laughed and looked straight through him. It could have been the warm beer, or his never failing need to prove how much of an ass he is, but her annoying laughing had made him try harder. 

Maybe-Sarah is sighing and gasping, her nails digging into his scalp. Nathan assumes this means he’s doing well, but he doesn’t know. He can’t really ask her. His tongue hurts and he's bored. 

Eventually, he looks up and finds the girl has passed out. He figures he should be mad, but mostly he feels relieved. He pushes her panties up, tucks her legs away out of the sidewalk, and goes back to the party. He doesn't see her again.

This is Nathan's relationship with women.

\---

The funny thing about dying is that it never feels the same way twice.

Nathan dies ten times in his coffin, and each one has its own special, shiny quirk. He thinks about them in detail to keep himself from going crazy. He’s died eleven times. It’s not natural. 

When he’s set free, he laughs and smiles and runs off on his merry way. He hangs himself and takes too many drugs and contemplates attempting to cut his own throat, just to catalog the differences in each death. It’s not pretty, or wise, but he’s never claimed to be any of those things. 

The scars fade, pink skin turning back into the pale, freckled mess he’s known all his life. He wonders what would happen if he blew his brains out. Would his skull grow itself back together? Would the tiny fragments of him left on the wall live forever, too, multiplying skin cells and hair cells until they became freaky little animals all on their own.

He thinks Kelly knows, what with her creepy little mind thing, but she never says anything about it. He catches her looking sometimes, her eyes narrowed at him like she’s seeing straight through him. Nathan thinks deliberately about her tits and grins at her until she leaves him alone. 

It’s a bit of an obsession, he thinks, to see what death is the most pleasant. Not that the dying itself is pleasant, but the waking up, the beating the death machine, is novel. This is his relationship with life.

\---

The baby’s beautiful. He has big, dark eyes and tiny little fingernails that dig into Nathan’s finger when he tries to grab it. He smiles a lot, because he’s yet to figure out how broken the world is, and Nathan’s glad of it. He likes to think that Junior will be more like the kids in the movies, instead of the kind of kid he and Marnie are. Were. 

Nathan presses his fingertip into Junior’s palm and watches itty bitty fingers curl around it. This tiny little bundle is so precious and vulnerable and _trusting_ , which is a stupid thing to be, because Nathan barely trusts himself. Those big eyes blink at him, and Nathan’s stomach turns.

He holds the baby when they go to sleep that night because the manger cradle can’t be comfortable and they both worry that he’ll suffocate in the sheets. Junior squirms and wiggles and sighs a lot, but he doesn’t cry. 

“You’ll be a little fighter, won’t you?” Nathan whispers. Marnie’s passed out beside him, snoring softly against his shoulder. She looks exhausted, even as she sleeps. It’s weird to feel her mostly flat stomach against his side. She feels almost like an entirely different person. 

Junior’s breaths puff slow and even against Nathan’s neck. He sounds a little wheezy. Nathan doesn’t know if babies are supposed to sound like that, or if there’s something wrong. He’s bone tired, but he refuses to fall asleep. He’s going to listen to every snuffle and breath until he’s sure that everything’s peachy. 

This is Nathan’s relationship with his son. His son. Weird. He kind of likes it.


End file.
